A family devoted to India for 100 years

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Edward Rice

Edward Rice was Benjamin’s youngest son. After study in London, he also joined the London Mission and spent 43 years as a missionary in India. First at Bangalore in 1873, when Benjamin was still working there and Lewis building Pen Rhiw, he seems to have been a particularly sympathetic and charming man. In addition to the normal missionary labours, Edward was for three periods Principal of the Bangalore Boys’ High School where Lewis had started his career. He was given the task of starting a new mission station at Chika Ballapura, near the Nandi Hills, north of Bangalore, living in a tent for a year while the mission was being built. After leave in England, Edward returned with a wife, Lilian; they had five children.

Edward was a considerable scholar of Kanarese, Chief Reviser of the Kanarese Bible from 1904-11, and wrote several books. He was chief pastor of the Bangalore Kanarese Church for many years. He retired in 1915 to Sussex, where he was much loved in the Hassocks community, working enthusiastically for the cause of peace, and died in 1936.

Henry Rice

Henry Rice was a younger brother of Lewis, one of the twins born in 1846. He studied in London, was ordained when he was 23 and joined the London Mission, in which his father was still very active.

After a short spell in Tamil Nadu to the south west of Bangalore, Henry was sent to Madras. In 1880 he resigned his connection with the London Mission and joined the Church of Scotland Mission in Madras, with whom he seems to have worked most notably at Arkonam, a mission aimed at the lowest castes. In 1890 the Religious Tract Society published his handsome little book, Native Life in South India. He probably worked in India until 1905 or so, when he and his wife and daughter retired to Edinburgh.